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My father Valadimir Pavlovskiy during reconstruction in Stalingrad in 1943. My father is the 4th on the left in the upper row.
We stayed in Stalinsk in 1941 (Novokuznetsk at present), Kemerovo region in Siberia, about 2500 km from Kiev. My parents went to work at the metallurgical plant producing steel for tanks. My father was production engineer and my mother worked at the plant training school.
We lived in a small room in a 3-storied dull gray building in Stalinsk. There was one kitchen and one bathroom on each floor. Each family had its own primus stove in the kitchen. There were few trees in the yard where children played. I went to the kindergarten in Stalinsk. We didn't have enough food. I remember the delicacy of that time: my mother washed potato peels and made potato pancakes. Food was distributed per cards. We received bread, peas and some cereals. We didn't get any meat, butter or sweets.
When winter came my father obtained a card to get one pair of boots and a quilted jacket. That was all we had. We wore these clothes in turn.
In 1943 the Soviet army liberated Stalingrad. My father was sent to do reconstruction and we all moved to Stalingrad. My father worked at the "Krasny Oktiabr" metallurgical plant that manufactured something for the military and was involved in the reconstruction of Stalingrad. The city was all ruined.
At first we lived in a dugout in Stalingrad. We fetched water from the Volga. The water was contaminated with oil and it was impossible to drink it. Later we received two rooms in the barrack for the workers of the plant. We were living in one room and kept some junk in another. We were used to huddling together and couldn't imagine why we might need another room.
My father got a job assignment in Kiev and we returned in 1946.
